Twitter is the conversation destination for event TV, and the Academy Awards is the premier TV event for Twitter. I previously wrote about smart-phone apps that meld TV and Twitter, such as IntoNow. You can tweet about going to a movie and then what you thought afterward, but there is the void in between when you are watching the movie in a darkened theater and tapping away at your mobile phone is frowned upon. But you can kick back at home on your couch and tweet, read tweets, and retweet to your heart’s content. I don’t care much about the Oscars. I like it when worthy works and artists are recognized, but the show is otherwise painful to sit through. But the Twitter Show that pours forth is quite entertaining, from the first arrivals on the red carpet till the last grumblings about how the truly best movies got ripped off. Here are some of my faves from Sunday night: More

The eBay offer to buy old iPhones and Androids for a minimum of $200 was to end on Feb. 22, but it was extended for two weeks. I got $200 for my iPhone 3GS. I clicked a few circles on eBay and was given a FedEx shipping label to print out. I dropped my old iPhone in an envelope with the free shipping label and that was it. Yesterday I got an email from eBay saying the phone was inspected and the sale was completed (see above). eBay figured it could make a mint off of AT&T customers dumping their iPhones for the Verizon iPhone. Verizon sales are brisk, but it hasn’t been the stampede that was hyped by the media. There is plenty of speculation as to why several years of bellyaching about AT&T’s call service hasn’t translated into the anticipated rush for Verizon iPhones (see video below). As for me, I sold my old iPhone because it had turned into a paperweight. I’m happy with my AT&T iPhone 4. The $200 will likely go to Apple because Steve needs my money.

Justin Bieber, Esq.! A real lawyer with the same name. Saw the ad on the subway tonight.

I promised to update my previous post on prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pa., asking a judge to make a local school administrator surrender the password to his mobile phone (I’m not saying cell phone anymore) in a criminal sexting case. A specialist in Information Security, or InfoSec, from the University of Pennsylvania, offered a solid read on the situation in my comments section:

If the contents of the cell phone are encrypted (depending on the type of device this can be easy or impossible) then law enforcement has no way to recover data off of the device. They require the password so they can access any data (such as saved SMS messages). There is some argument that the Fifth Amendment protects against such disclosure to the courts. The reality is that we’ve finally reached an era where consumer grade encryption is good enough to foil most law enforcement. It’s why entire countries now forbid Blackberry encryption.

Sounds about right, especially the part about countries, such as India, trying to deal with BlackBerry privacy. Thank you to Justin Klein Keane for providing that conclusive response.

Have you tried Quora? You go to the website, ask a question, and supposedly somebody with some knowledge on the subject will provide you an answer. Sometimes you get an answer straight from a key player, such as when the John Borthwick, the CEO of bit.ly, the URL shortener using the Libyan .ly, responded to this question: “What will happen to http://bit.ly links if Gaddafi shuts down the Internet in Libya due to protests?” So-called Q&A sites are hot, and Quora is red-hot with hype. The developers are trying to create social places with quality content, and that is a worthy goal. But can Quora avoid degenerating into a Yahoo! Answers site? That has been the biggest fear of the Quora enthusiasts. And their fear is being realized. Let us examine some unanswered Quora questions:

I first noticed photo-filter and sharing apps last year when a friend started posting Hipstamatic pictures on Facebook. I tried the app myself and found it a bit unwieldy. I then tried Instagram and found it to be more intuitive – a natural fit. The charm of the app is that it makes photos look dated, oversaturated or desaturated, scratched and smudged. The various filters can make bad photos better. They can also make good photos great (in my opinion). The free iPhone app has become popular enough that developers are releasing apps to work with it. And you know you’ve really made a mark when other companies identify their products as being like yours, such as live-streaming site Justin.tv, which is working on “Instagram for video.” In December, Instagram reached 1 million users. Just to show how fast things are moving, it took Twitter two years to reach that number. More

This former middle school vice principal with the Justin Bieber haircut (!) is accused of “sexting” two 13-year-old boys about masturbation. Prosecutors in Montgomery County, Pa., have his cell phone, but don’t have his password and have asked a judge to order Charles Hurst, 37, to surrender his password or provide an unencrypted copy of the phone’s data. He claims his cell phone was infected by the “Cabir worm” and wants his own forensic expert to analyze the phone to prove it. Prosecutors says Hurst’s phone was not susceptible to the virus, so his claim is bogus. Anyway, I’m surprised the prosecutors are asking for the password. I just assume that law enforcement is capable of getting data from a phone without a password, but maybe I’m wrong. Or there could be a legal reason why the prosecutors are asking and not a technical one. I don’t have an answer, but I’m meeting some information security types and I’ll ask. In the meantime, here’s a video of Brett Favre getting hit in the groin with a football: